Well, my life may not be normal, but it sure is glamorous: today when I was supposed to be posting I was instead locked in an art gallery which contained no list of staff phone numbers (I snooped everywhere, I tell you) but many, many paintings on the themes of powerlessness, distress and alienation. We bonded, those paintings and I, while I waited for someone, anyone with keys to come and release me from my empty, gilded cage.

Fortunately, raincoaster here is a resourceful woman possessed of a large handbag, and thus is never without a paperback and at least one back issue of Vanity Fair. So it was that I became re-acquainted with an old friend of mine, the book Elegance, by Genevieve Dariaux; through the intermediary of the book Elegance by Kathleen Tessaro.

Some background: Dariaux’s book is really the definitive literary examination of the concept and practice of elegance (What Would Jackie Do notwithstanding, and I’m sorry but Breakfast at Tiffany’s was about a call girl and Capote really wanted Marilyn Monroe in the role, so there). Tessaro’s book is a well-done chick lit look at what happens to a particular woman when she tries to live by the rules set out in the original. Dariaux also wrote Entertaining With Elegance, which I’ve had for perhaps twenty years and believe me, between that and Miss Manners you’ve got the distressing concept of social interaction just stone-cold covered.

In any case, Tessaro’s book quoted a part of Dariaux’s book relevant to the TeenyManolosphere and I thought I would reproduce it here. It fits very well with the Frugal Indulgent’s Manifesto which I quoted earlier:

Little daughters are understandably the pride and joy of their mothers, but they are very often also, alas, the reflection of their mother’s inelegance. When you see a poor child all ringletted, beribboned, and loaded down with a handbag, an umbrella, and earrings, or wearing crepe-soled shoes with a velvet dress, you can be certain that her mother hasn’t the slightest bit of taste.

It is a serious handicap to be brought up this way, because a child must be endowed with a very strong personality of her own in order to rid herself of the bad habits that have been inculcated during her early years. The more simply a little girl is dressed – sweater and skirts in the winter, Empire-style cotton dresses in the summer – the more chic she is. It is never too early to learn that discretion and simplicity are the foundations of elegance.

Of course, to translate this to our modern world requires some rearrangement; for instance, anyone who’s seen Joe Simpson and his offspring knows that the above does not apply exclusively to mothers, if it ever did.

With a record-breaking 238 entries, it will soon be time to announce the winner of the first Stila prize package.

But first…

If you didn’t win, don’t fret, I’ve got more! Two more prize packages, to be exact. There will be a Grand Prize filled to the brim with Stila products, retailing for over $175. Also, a runner-up will be awarded another prize package with over $100 in yummy Stila goodness, all provided by the lovely folks at Stila Cosmetics.

By penning a winning haiku, of course! The subject of the haiku must be somehow related to beauty/makeup. It can be funny, serious, outrageous, whatever kind of haiku you do best. You will be using the classic 5/7/5 format, with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five again in the last line. An example has kindly been written for you by raincoaster:

1. One entry per person.
2. Haiku not adhering to the subject matter outlined above will be disqualified.
3. Contest open to residents of the US and Canada.
4. Contest ends at midnight (Pacifc) August 29, 2008.

And now, the moment you have all been waiting for, the winner of the first prize package from the first giveaway!

The wonderful folks at Stila were kind enough to send me an impressively large package filled with goodies. Now, I thought for a minute of leaving the country, changing my name, and being forever happy with my fabulous stash.

But then guilt got the better of me, and I decided to play nice and share.

The sacrifices I make for you. Really.

I have two prize packages worth over $100 apiece, and a Grand Prize worth over $150 in glorious Stila products to make you look even prettier than you already are.

Here are the rules:
1. Enter the contest by commenting on this post.
2. Contest open only to Canadian and United States residents.
3. Contest deadline is midnight (Pacific) August 15, 2008.
4. Only one entry per person. Duplicate entries will be deleted.

The winner will be chosen by a random number generator, but it never hurts to compliment people shoving free things at you.

Say hello to Tavi, a 12-year-old fashion blogger who is the very embodiment of superfantastic. While your common-or-garden tween angst appears to have put a temporary crimp in the blogging style, we have hope that she’ll again take to her keyboard and, with time, perhaps realize that no, Katie Holmes should not have worn black socks with those gladiator sandal heels.

Until such time as she makes a triumphant return to the blogosphere (ETA 36 hours) we can trawl the archives, enjoying such gems as: My New Best Friends

Normally I would say I want to kidnap them, but since we’re possibly the same age I shall instead befriend them. We’ll make secret clubs and eat soup we made out of tree bark and run around with mops on our heads and eat bugs. You’re extremely jealous you’re no longer 12 years old, aren’t you?

Leave it to the Japanese to make a toilet training device with no sense of shame but an overdeveloped sense of theatre and the bizarre. Stolen from JapanProbe, here is the World Famous Shimajiro Toilet Training video, subtitled in English. Over at JP they have the actual sounds the machine makes as MP3 files as well: if only this little device looked like the Dora the Explorer aquapet, my day would be complete!

You need a 1000 watt microwave or an aptitude for math (to do the conversion) and one microwave-safe (there go those hyphens again and, come to think of it, the parentheses as well) mug for each serving. They want you to dump the finished cake out onto a plate, but they must have servants or dishwashers or something; I’d just eat it out of the mug with an iced tea spoon.

Bonus points: pig-shaped stencils on top with a sifting of icing sugar. I mean, anybody can make a five minute chocolate mug cake in a pig mug, but a five minute chocolate mug cake in a pig mug with sugar pigs on top? That’s gold star material.

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Manolo the Shoeblogger is not Mr. Manolo Blahnik. This website is not affiliated in any way with Mr. Manolo Blahnik, any products bearing the federally registered trademarks MANOLO®, BLAHNIK® or MANOLO BLAHNIK®, or any licensee of said federally registered trademarks. The views expressed on this website are solely those of the author.